According to the recent “Network Solutions State of Small Business” report, 9% of small business owners will spend less on their website, or forgo a website completely, in favor of using social media. (The stat is buried a bit in that page/link.) That’s not all…

In an analysis of that data Steve King of Emergent Research says “we do think over the next 5 years Facebook is going to become the primary website for roughly half of all small businesses that are online.”

This is so true. Invest in something that you can leverage social media to build. If you’re using Facebook as your website you’re missing the point of Social Media Marketing. Facebook should be a portal to your website. The company I manage social media for has Facebook as the 4th highest referral source to the website. That’s all social media should be is a way to push people to a website. The website is the face of your company and Facebook/Twitter etc are the commercial/print ad/Yellow Pages.

Invest on your website, people! Investing less money in your website makes your website like an ancient business. Businesses nowadays has websites, if not social media pages, that could provide added income through advertising! I got my service with advancedwebads and I really got a great service with their unlimited banner impressions and clicks for a flat monthly fee.

I won’t bet a quarter on facebook becoming the primary website for half of small businesses in 5 years. In the best case, it will become the store window of half of small businesses websites. Small businesses future is linked to social media marketing, and have to take advantage of this network, but have also to take advantage of real website containing customers oriented features and services.

Considering how robust the architecture behind the new FB places redesign is, I don’t see too many reasons not to use them as a primary means of customer engagement. The only downside is the supposed transitory nature of Social Media, but really, Facebook is not going anywhere, and before it does there will be a long, clear period of warnings that all is not well.

With the retooling of the canvas API’s, you can now do anything on FB that you could do on a regular site, so why pay for both?